Old Henry: Tim Blake Nelson and Stephen Dorff are note-perfect in an old-school Western reboot

By Karen Gordon

Rating: B-plus

If you’re yearning for a Western with a vintage feel, and a touch of mythos, writer/director Potsy Ponciroli’s homage to the genre, Old Henry will nicely fill that bill.

Tim Blake Nelson plays Henry, a tough, hard working widower farmer, living on an isolated ranch with his teenage son Wyatt, (Gavin Lewis). Wyatt wants to live a different kind of life, one his father can’t imagine. He can’t squeeze empathy out of his crotchety dad, who seems to answer everything with a grunt, a discouraging word, or a slap across the son’s face.  

Despite the badge, Stephen Dorff is trouble for gunman-turned-farmer Henry

Dad is pretty tightly coiled. But he is, in fact, overprotective. And for some strange reason, he won’t even teach Wyatt how to shoot a gun.  

One day Henry is out in the fields when he comes across a man near death from a shotgun wound. Nearby is a leather satchel filled with money.  Against his better judgement, Henry decides to bring the man back to the house to give him a chance to heal. He hides the satchel of money where he thinks no one, including Wyatt, will find it. 

The man, Curry (Scott Haze) wakes up and is immediately trouble. While Henry is trying to get a straight answer out of him, more trouble arrives.

Three men, wearing Sheriff’s badges ride up to the house, looking for the missing man, who they say is an outlaw.  The Sheriff, Ketchum (Stephen Dorff) is an archetypical Western movie villain, a sadist with a penchant for speechifying and lying.  Always smiling, but oozing bad vibes. The kind of character who rarely reaches for his gun because he has henchmen with itchy trigger fingers to do that for him.  

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There’s a verbal stand off between Henry and Ketchum, and, then, of course, the inevitable shoot ‘em ups. Along the way, Ketchum notes that Henry’s expertise with a gun seems too sophisticated for a farmer, and wonders who he really is.  But this business of who really is who they say they are is part of the story, and indeed is a venerable Western theme.

Writer director Ponciroli says the movie is an homage, not to the Old West,  but to Western movies. At a compact 98 minute running time, he’s cut out a lot of exposition to focus on character and action: stand offs, and shoot ‘em ups. (It strikes me that in its way, Old Henry is kind of like a low-tech Bond movie, a hero who is prepared to kill, surrounded by untrustworthy characters with questionable intentions who are armed to the teeth.)

That keeps it lean and focused and, of course violent. But what makes it so watchable is his excellent lead cast. Tim Blake Nelson is, as always, deeply into the role and anchors the film. In a character-driven movie where we’re not always sure of who anyone really is, he’s someone we can believe in.  

But I also want to speechify about Dorff, who does such a wonderful job as Sheriff Ketchum.  He takes a clichéd character, and plays him with the charm and menace and ego that makes this kind of villain fun to watch, but without making it a caricature.

And given the amount that this character talks, and the flowery era-style dialogue he has to chew through, that’s something. There are several verbal confrontational scenes between him and Blake Nelson, and they’re fantastic: Menacing and so much fun to watch.  

(A note for country music fans, Trace Adkins has a small role as Henry’s brother-in-law, Al.)

If you scratch at the story, there are a few oddities here and there. Ponciroli has added in a little twist, playing on Western history.  But that doesn’t detract from the fun to be had here. 

Old Henry, written and directed by Potsy Ponciroli, Starring Tim Blake Nelson, Stephen Dorff, Scott Haze, Gavin Lewis

Available via VOD, Friday, October 8.